What Past Lives Can Do For You
-Eowyn
It doesn’t matter if you have spontaneous memories, past life dreams or if you do self-hypnosis, remembering your past lives is not always easy. You need a certain amount of patience, constant effort, the conscious desire to know everything about yourself (even those things you won’t like), and, above all, the inner strength and state of mind to cope with the emotions that usually come along with past life memories. At the beginning the feeling is amazing. Once you decide you can’t doubt anymore and that you’re not crazy, it’s possible you’ll want to know more, and soon you’ll realize you’re awakening long-forgotten emotions as intense and real as your present life emotions. Or, sometimes you don’t need to awake anything, as emotions are already inside you, even though you didn’t know they were past life related until now. So, you have two options: going ahead, knowing the path before you is sometimes dark and lonely, or going back to your old ignorance… after all, ignorance is bliss, so they say. Maybe you’ll think you were happier before knowing your past lives, you have enough with your current problems and you don’t want more. That’s alright, it’s your choice… I always say the path is sometimes hard, very hard, but at the end it’s always worthwhile.
Why would I say this? Well, life before and after I revealed my own past lives has not changed very much. But knowing who I’ve been, where I come from, and knowing that death is not the end, has given me a whole new perspective on what I’m doing here and what life is about. These are some of the things you might discover if you decide to take the first steps:
1. You have lived before.
Yes, too obvious, but hard to assimilate for people like us, who are used to live in such a materialistic world, where talking about death is taboo and you’re weird if you believe in anything supernatural… And it will even more surprising when you discover not only that you have lived before, but also that you remember more than one life, and it turns out you’ve been male, female, black, Indian, poor, rich, warrior, monk, pirate, slave, humble fisherman, thief… whatever you can imagine. Maybe you suspected some, but others are really a surprise. You may be living a normal and boring life now, but it has not always been this way.
2. You have died before… and you’re back again.
Seeing (and feeling) your own death in a past life can be scary sometimes, especially if it’s a traumatic death, but once you’ve remembered, this is the best proof you’ll ever have that your soul survives and turns back somehow. This makes you understand that the real test is living, and that death is only a transition to somewhere else. You’ll know that all suffering has an end, you’ll no longer fear death and won’t be afraid to live with all intensity, because no matter what mistakes you’ve made, there’s no eternal punishment in the other side.
3. You don’t lose your loved ones.
You may find through your research that a lot of people you’ve met in your current life have been with you in previous lives. There are different theories to explain this. I only know for sure that you can recognize the souls that were important for you before, and that you’re bound to meet them again and again, playing different roles, always together as friends or enemies, learning (or not) from the experiences in each life. It’s a common feeling to miss someone from your past. And it’s reassuring to know that people you love are not gone forever.
4. You finally get to know yourself.
We all have our shadow, that dark side of ourselves we don’t want to show to anyone. We all are human beings, we have virtues and we have defects, no one is perfect and you’ll probably find out that sometimes you have not behaved the way you should have. There’s no point in judging yourself, you did what you did and you can’t change it now. But you can always accept it and move on, trying not to yield to the same impulses again. Knowing your weak points make you stronger, use it for your advantage, to fight your present life problems. And what the Hell, you also know you’ve been damn good in other occasions. You may have valour, or loyalty, or a sense of justice. Things can bring you down now, but you’re proud of what you accomplished in other lives. There’s no reason to think it can’t be the same this time around.
5. You may become more tolerant.
At least that happened to me. I always thought I was quite a good person. I was a good student, well-considered in school, quiet, never problematic, with normal friends, didn’t like alcohol or drugs… and I always despised Humanity in general as there were many things I thought I would never be able to do… That was until I discovered I also had done a few of those things. I learnt that there are no excuses, but circumstances that sometimes can be hard enough to make you do certain things you may regret. And that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it just means you did something wrong. When you realize you can’t judge yourself for it, you think twice before judging other persons.
6. You learn to take life in a different way.
All is relative. Once you know you can’t die and that death is not the worst thing that can happen to you, you learn to enjoy life, you learn you have nothing to lose really, the problems you encounter seem less important, it’s easier to take them as mere trials that help you evolve and become a better person, if that’s what you want to do. You become more patient too, as time has not the same meaning anymore. Some people think learning about your past lives is getting lost in the past, but on the contrary, my experience tells me you learn to appreciate the present much more and you don’t worry so much about the future, as you know it’s yours to build.
7. You don’t need anyone telling you what to believe. You just know by yourself.
And you’ll even want to share what you’ve found out… until you realize there are people who don’t want to listen and prefer to go on “believing” what their religion tells them. It’s ok, it’s up to them. This is a personal journey and quite often you’ll find you can only talk about it with other people who remember too. It doesn’t matter, as long as you are completely sure your memories are real, especially because you have validated them. You’ll no longer need senseless spiritual teachings and you’ll base your theories on what you’ve experienced yourself and your own intuitions. You may be wrong, but at least it’s not just “a belief”. It’s something else, it will even become a certainty. Maybe not everything is completely clear, but no one can ever give you morality lessons because probably you know better, though you can’t say why you feel that way. You also learn to respect all points of view, as everyone can choose what road to tread.
Everyone is different and I can’t know for sure. But learning about your past lives makes you reflect… a lot. It can be overwhelming sometimes, but it’s like having all the knowledge and wisdom of all those persons you have been close at hand. It makes you feel old, though sometimes you still feel like a child, because your soul is ageless and the journey has just begun. It makes you understand life is always worth living, and makes you appreciate the simple things that only as a human we can enjoy: a sunrise, the wind in your face, swimming in a river, a good laugh with your friends.
Now, are you going to miss this wonderful opportunity?